Lawsuit Challenges Nevada's Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment

Image from Gay & Lesbian Nevada Resources

I find the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), their spinoffs, affiliated groups, and predecessors in the same effort, frankly, ridiculous. Their entire premise--that heterosexual marriage suffers some sort of damage if gay people get married--is flawed, and has zero evidence. But nowhere was the idea more silly, more disingenuous than it was in Nevada.

Nevada, home of the drive-thru wedding chapel. A place where you can meet someone, rock their world, and get married all in a day or two! You can get married by an Elvis impersonator, and if you change your mind--like Britney Spears did--you can get a quick annulment (or if you waited too long, a quickie divorce). An early state in the anti-gay marriage stakes, Nevada first proposed a state constitutional amendment in 2000. This was coincidentally the same year that Rick Rockwell "won" Darva Conger as his bride in the Las Vegas-based game show, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? On friggin' FOX.

According to Las Vegas
City Life, Richard
Ziser has dreams
about men like this.
Who am I to argue?

So when a toady named Richard Ziser (with the help of local right-wing radio "talent" like Alan Stock) started to sell Nevada on his anti-gay amendment, the sell was the sanctity of marriage. In Nevada. Unfortunately, the gay community in Nevada and Las Vegas is a rather loose affiliation, unprepared for the steamroller that was coming. Even though it had to pass in consecutive votes to become an official amendment, it passed both times and it wasn't even close. For no other reason than to put a boot on gay couples' necks, discrimination was enshrined in the battle-born Nevada state constitution. Ziser later ran for office with the slogan, "Faith. Family. Freedom," which shows you a clue to his theocratic aims. He lost. Good.

Anyway, I'm hoping that the lawsuit filed this week undoes the nasty work Ziser wrought. I hope his entry in Wikipedia goes down as a black mark in our history, and that at least one of his grandkids gets gay married.

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Lambda Legal Files Federal Lawsuit Seeking Marriage Equality in Nevada

Today, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund took what one of its lawyers calls "a strategic step" in the national effort to advance marriage equality by filing a federal lawsuit in Nevada seeking equal marriage rights for eight same-sex couples in the state. . .

Read more at: MetroWeekly